Canny Minds Blog

Interview with Philip Carter, the current British Mensa Journal Puzzle Editor & Canny Minds Games Editor

Posted on 03. Aug, 2009 by Jenny in Articles, Brain Training, General

Hard to believe today but it was only by chance that Philip Carter found that he had a talent for setting puzzles. Now one of the country’s best-known, and best-loved, brain-teasing writers, Philip had never considered trying to devise puzzles before he joined Mensa in the mid-Eighties. And even that came about by chance. He candidly admits that he had never thought of himself as “brainy” until one day he had a go at a mini IQ test in a copy of the Readers Digest discarded by his mother.

“It was set by Mensa and it took about 30 minutes which fitted nicely with my dinner hour,” he recalls. “I ended up scoring fairly highly.”

Philip sent for a home test and then went on to do a supervised test. “I was really pleased to pass that,” he said. “And when I joined Mensa I signed up for Enigma SIG, because of the puzzles. I had never designed a puzzle in my life but I did a little grid puzzle and sent it to Ken Russell, who was then editor of the SIG. He liked it and he used it not just in Enigma but also in the Mensa Journal.” Suitably encouraged, Philip sent in more puzzles – all of which Ken liked and used. “He was very encouraging,” Philip recalls. “And then one day he said I should collect a few examples of my puzzles and send them out to publishers who might be interested in doing a book.” The rest, as they say, is history. Philip’s first collection, Take The IQ Challenge, was published in 1986. Philip and Ken, who at the time was Mensa’s puzzles editor, went on to write countless books together and, since Ken’s sad death, Philip has written many more under his own name, the latest of which, Perfect Brain Training, has just been published by Random House,

Did he expect, back when that first book was published that he would go on to sell hundreds of thousands of books?

“Did I ’eck,” he says his in his
native Yorkshire accent. “I thought it would sell
500 copies and disappear from the shelves.”

In fact it went on to be reprinted 20 times and would, like others, be sold around the world. So, what, we asked Philip, makes the perfect puzzle. “I don’t know!” he replied with a laugh. “I think it is when someone cannot solve it but when
they look at the answer they kick themselves.”

Philip is not surprised by the new-found popularity of puzzles, brain-training games and other ‘brain work out’ regimes.

 “They are in vogue and in such demand now because I think people
have finally realised something that I have been
saying for the last 20 years – that the brain needs to
be exercised, to be trained, every bit as much as
other parts of the body.”

While Philip agrees that a person’s natural IQ cannot be increased, he believes that you can improve your IQ test scores by practising the kind of problems you will face in the tests – which is why, he believes, many of his IQ-testing books have proved so popular. And, he adds, improving your IQ scores could help you find a top job – as many companies today use IQ testing as part of their recruitment process. In fact Philip himself has been asked to devise just such tests for employers – and, on one occasion for the reality television programme Big Brother (and yes, he was fully aware of the irony of having IQ tests on BB house mates). “The interesting thing about that,” he adds, “is that there was a pair of twins in that series and I expected them to score roughly equally – but one scored much more highly than the other.” Still living in the Huddersfield area where he was born, Philip is today retired from his ‘day job’ in the export sales office of a Yorkshire engineering company – and enjoying well-earned time on his favourite hobby of gardening.

To buy books by Philip Carter or other puzzle & IQ books, click here.

Tags: brain training, IQ Tests, Philip Carter